Blogger Dan Meyer (dy/dan) is one of the first teachers I started to read regularly in the “edublogger” community. I am inspired by the way he is always trying to make the way he teaches math more effective. One of his biggest contributions to my own thought is the idea of “being less helpful.” For Dan, this is about taking everyday situations that are not inherently mathematical and using them in his classroom. He references textbook questions that try to take everyday situations (like a ski lift going up a mountain) but ruin them by immediately asking mathematical questions and laying a mathematical framework over the original scenario. Dan argues that if he can be less helpful to his students and let them wrestle with the scenario and come up with their own questions (even if they aren’t the tidy ones his textbook wants to provide) he is doing much more for their problem-solving and real world development. I am 100% behind the idea– but I’m not a math teacher.
However, I think this principle can be applied to social studies as well. What can social studies teachers do to “be less helpful?” I think it might begin with the willingness to ask open ended questions that don’t necessarily have a right or wrong answer. Forming these questions and then allowing students the latitude to research and develop their own ideas (while logically supporting them) can be a useful way to break them of the habit of regurgitating what they hear in class. Provide the conceptual knowledge and basic information in class and then ask students to rearrange that information in a unique way.
I think being less helpful also lies in the way I, as a teacher, respond to answers given in class. Dan talks about this in his talk; about how the “wrong answer face” and “right answer face” I give students needs to be the same. If I challenge every answer the same way, regardless of it’s accuracy, I can help students develop the habit of supporting their answers with logic and research. Tied to this idea is asking questions that challenge accepted answers. Getting students to question what they thought they knew might also be an accurate way of making myself less useful and them better students.
Most assuredly, I know what NOT “being less helpful” is about. It is not giving students questions, a textbook, and a class period of free time. That is nothing more than cruel babysitting and while technically not helpful, not the kind of “not helpful” I’m looking for.
Veteran social studies teachers, what do you think you can do to be “less helpful” to your students? Is it even worth doing?
